FAQ

FAQ

What is Kinetix, in one sentence? A self-hosted, single-binary proxy that speaks OpenAI and Anthropic wire formats in front of admin-configured upstream LLM APIs, adding virtual keys, account pools, executable Routes with fallback, cost tracking, and an embedded dashboard.

Is it "Prism"? Prism was the earlier working name; the product is Kinetix. The two original requirement drafts have been merged into a single design document, docs/DESIGN.md.

Do I need .env or a config file? No. A normal install is configured with the CLI and stored under XDG directories. A .env and a bootstrap TOML file are optional overrides.

Where is my data stored? ~/.config/kinetix (config/keys), ~/.local/share/kinetix (database, exports, backups), ~/.local/state/kinetix (logs) — all overridable and easy to back up or remove.

Does it bundle provider presets or price lists? No. Every provider, model, capability, parameter, and price is admin-defined.

Which upstream providers work? Anything that speaks the OpenAI, Anthropic, or Gemini wire format (the three outbound adapters), selected by the provider's configured wire_format.

Does it cache responses locally? No — local response caching is intentionally excluded from v1. Kinetix does preserve upstream prompt-cache hints and offers cache-aware sticky routing.

Can it enforce a hard budget? It enforces RPM/TPM and daily/monthly budgets, but budget reservation is not implemented, so concurrent requests may briefly overshoot. Documented and accepted.

Why is /healthz still 200 when the database is down? Because inference still works from the in-memory snapshot. The body reports control_plane: degraded; the HTTP status stays 200 so the instance isn't dropped from a load balancer.

Can clients see which account served them? No. Serving topology is admin-only. Clients get an opaque X-Kinetix-Route-Id that an admin can resolve to a Route Trace.

How do I point Pi (or any OpenAI client) at it? Set the base URL to http://127.0.0.1:8080/v1 and the API key to a sk-kinetix-… virtual key. Anthropic clients use http://127.0.0.1:8080 with /v1/messages.

How do I get the dashboard? It's embedded — open http://127.0.0.1:8080/admin and log in with the admin password.

How do I update or uninstall? Update: install the new binary and restart (migrations run automatically after a pre-migration backup). Uninstall: kinetix uninstall or uninstall.sh.

Is there a plugin system? Not in v1. Internal extension seams exist, but a public plugin/runtime ABI is deferred to a separate decision.

Is it multi-tenant / highly available? No. It's a single-machine, small-team gateway. Multi-tenant SaaS and HA are explicit non-goals.

What's the license? MIT.